More Americans in deep poverty

[question everything]

StarTribune.com

More Americans in deep poverty

By Tony Pugh, McClatchy News Service
2/24/07

WASHINGTON - The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation's "haves" and "have-nots" continues to widen.

A McClatchy News Service analysis of the 2005 census figures, the latest available, found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty. A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 -- half the federal poverty line -- was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year. The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That's much faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period.

(snip)

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income for working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five consecutive years. These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation's 37 million poor people into deep poverty -- the highest rate since at least 1975.

The share of poor Americans in deep poverty has climbed steadily in the last three decades. But since 2000, the number of severely poor has grown "more than any other segment of the population," according to a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The growth, which leveled off in 2005, in part reflects how hard it is for low-skilled workers to earn their way out of poverty in an unstable job market that favors skilled and educated workers. It also suggests that social programs aren't as effective as they once were.

(snip)

http://www.startribune.com/484/story/1022389.html

[rwenos]

1. This is What Pubs Want

Their dream since ww2 has been summed up in one phrase -- CHEAP LABOR. They've finally seen the promised land. No benefits, no social insurance, no raises in pay, temping run amok, no job security. Adds up to a giant pool of near-slave labor.

The corporate dream.

[NMMNG]

2. Indeed

So long as the underclass is kept permanently down they can maintain their stranglehold.

[EFerrari]

4. How stupid can they be, Buffy, because that never works.

Oh, it works for a while. But eventually, it doesn't. You'd think they'd know enough to throw an occasional bone or something. :shrug:

[NMMNG]

5. Nah

As one group of dirt poor workers dies off the next generation takes over, or they just import "guest workers" from hideously poor/ravaged foreign nations. Poor people are nothing but slaves for them.

[EFerrari]

3. Can we get this on the front page?

[LafayetteTGR]

6. Please help me

As a former repug, I am having a hard time convincing my family and friends that switching parties was the right thing to do. Yesterday, I got into a heated argument with my best friend(?) about poverty in our country. She is of the mindset that anyone can get out of poverty if they so choose. Basically, all you have to do is work hard and employees will recognize it and you will be continually appreciated and promoted. She believes that people actively choose to live in poverty because the government does enough for people to get them on their feet. Basically, we were arguing over the poor of New Orleans and if they should be helped anymore than they already have. I found myself defending my position, but I didn't think that I did a very good job articulating my position. Does anyone have any suggestions or suggested reading? Like I said, I'm standing alone here, no one in my family, or friends, agree with me at all. I didn't know where else to look.

[question everything]

7. In what type of a cocoon does your friend live?

and how old (or young) s/he is?

Look all around you. People lose their jobs even though they worked hard. The company just decided to "trim" costs.

Or their jobs were outsourced to India.

People get sick, through no fault of their own. They either do not have health insurance, or the health insurance will cover very limited treatments, they can no longer work; they work for employer that do not provide paid sick leave - see a separate thread on this forum.

People lose their business. Yes, the people of New Orleans. They may have had a small restaurant, or in the rental business and everything ended up under water and they do not have funds to start new. Besides, their customers fled never to come back.

Yes, we would like to believe this that this is the land of opportunity. That all we need to do is work hard and be rewarded. And, yes, there are lazy people who do not want to work hard... most of them are white middle class men who think that the world owe them something. But in the real world, this is not how it works. And there are always the overt discrimination, of course.

You may want also to read this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x265674

which expanded on the post here.

[butterfly77]

8. Take her for a drive...

in some areas where you know there are homeless or people who are not faring so well,preferably some where, where she least expects to see poverty. Find some meeting where people are talking about these issues...